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The Trump administration has wasted no time rolling back nearly all federal incentives for clean energy enacted by President Joe Biden, while also pushing Cabinet secretaries to promote policies that increase fossil fuel production, including even the Environmental Protection Agency. So it wasn’t entirely surprising that in late July the Energy Department released a report, “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,” that told Americans the climate-warping effects of carbon dioxide and other pollutants aren’t nearly as big a problem as they’ve been led to believe. That’s convenient since the report was done in conjunction with EPA’s plan to jettison the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the legal basis for U.S. climate regulations.
While it doesn’t deny temperatures are rising, the study concluded that “CO2-induced warming appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and that aggressive mitigation strategies may be misdirected.” It also suggests potential benefits from increased carbon dioxide for agriculture—while failing to mention that drought and rising temperatures more than offset that.
A public comment period on the report concluded last week, with scores of leading climate researchers determining the findings to be “either misleading or fundamentally incorrect.”
“This document might appear to be a scientific report, but it is anything but,” said Andy Miller, a 34-year veteran with EPA’s Office of Research and Development that was eliminated in June. “I always like to find a silver lining; in this case, the silver lining is that this document is a wonderful example of junk science that can be used as an example for years to come.”
Rebecca Neumann, a University of Washington associate professor of engineering and environmental science, was similarly unimpressed by the report’s scientific rigor. “It is a policy-driven document that selectively presents information to support a predetermined narrative,” she said in comments shared by DOEresponseSite, which compiled views by more than 80 scientists. “Rather than engaging with the full body of climate science, it highlights isolated findings that, when removed from context, give the misleading impression that rising CO₂ levels are broadly beneficial.”
Globally, there’s little dispute that fossil fuels are the leading contributor of human-derived carbon emissions that are generating ever more intense heatwaves, storms, wildfires, droughts and flooding. Currently, all advanced economies are in agreement on the need to shift to renewable and carbon-free energy sources as rapidly as possible to slow greenhouse gas emissions, with one notable outlier: the United States.
If Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who ran a natural gas fracking company and was a critic of climate-oriented rules before Trump put him in his current job, was hoping the report might bolster support for climate skeptics, the overwhelming response from scientists was that it earned a grade of F.
The Big Read
Illustration by Samantha Lee; Getty Images
Waymo Is A Trillion-Dollar Opportunity. Google Just Needs To Seize It.
In the summer of 2015, when veteran auto executive John Krafcik was recruited to turn Google’s Self-Driving Car Project into a new business unit for Alphabet, cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page gave him an aspirational target.
“They asked me to build a great company, and then make it bigger than Google,” Krafcik, former CEO of Waymo, the project’s successor, told Forbes.
The idea was preposterous since it wasn’t clear when or if autonomous driving would be safe enough for real-world deployment, let alone at scale. A decade later, things have changed. Waymo robotaxis log about 300,000 paid rides worth at least $6 million every week in the five cities where they operate. That figure will rise exponentially in the next few years as its fleet grows and the service expands to 15 markets or more, including Miami, New York, Washington, DC, Boston, Nashville and maybe Tokyo, Waymo’s first international foray. Last week, the company said it’s testing in Denver and Seattle, following a blog post emphasizing plans to scale as quickly as possible.
“We’re entering a new chapter and accelerating our commercial expansion,” Waymo said. “If you see us driving in your city, it’s because we are working hard to serve you in the future.”
After 16 years of disciplined development, billionaire tech investor Vinod Khosla says it’s time to floor it.
“Waymo’s in a multitrillion-dollar global market and as far as I can tell, there are no competitors that are close,” Khosla told Forbes. “You’ve got a multi-trillion dollar business–frankly, it’s probably bigger than Google’s ad business by a lot–and they’re in a position to increase the lead over others. I’d be spending as much money on this as on data centers, like tens of billions of dollars a year to expand their coverage and own market share very, very quickly.”
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Bob Frenzel, president and CEO of Xcel Energy, on diversifying the utility’s power portfolio and renewable energy cost benefits
Xcel’s target is an 80% reduction in the carbon intensity of the power you generate by the end of the decade. How far along are you in achieving that?
We’re at about 60% right now … So we’re well on our path and we’ve got resource plans in front of our states, Colorado, the upper Midwest and in the Southwest, to retire the remainder of our coal fleet by the end of the decade and repower all that coal with wind, solar, storage and natural gas. And in that process, one of the other commitments that we’ve made over time is I think we’ve shut down or converted 26 coal units at this point, and we’ve not laid off a single employee in the process. We’ve been able to do that and still keep our energy bills 28% below the national average.
Am I correct in assuming wind is a pretty big part of non-carbon energy in your portfolio?
Yes, and I’d highlight that our approach leverages a diverse energy mix – including renewables, nuclear and natural gas – to ensure reliable, affordable power as demand grows. Besides nuclear, wind is the largest form of carbon-free energy in our portfolio, mostly because it serves both the upper Midwest very well, as well as Colorado and the panhandle of Texas and Eastern New Mexico.
When you’re looking at adding capacity, where do things stand at the moment as far as the relative cost of a new gas-fired system on a per megawatt basis versus wind or solar with battery storage?
As the data center demand has been rising, what you’ve seen is the country tapping into all of its latent capacity in terms of manufacturing gas-fired power plants. So if you went to a GE or a Siemens or a Mitsubishi today and tried to get a combustion turbine for a gas plant, you’re probably going to get told you’ve got a four- or five-year waiting period to get it. And because we haven’t built a lot of gas [plants] over the last two decades, most of the stuff we’ve built has been wind and solar and a little bit of storage, as a country. Also, the engineering, procurement and construction firms really don’t have the breadth and depth of talent that they used to build gas plants. The cost of labor has gone up significantly. The cost of [gas] turbines and equipment has gone up significantly.
Even in the absence of tax credits – because we operate in some of the windiest and sunniest parts of the country – renewable generation remains our lowest cost of new generation. That’s because the price of gas assets has gone up so significantly over the last three to four years as the demand for firm energy has gone up significantly. Ultimately, a diverse mix of nuclear, hydrogen, renewables and modern grid upgrades keeps energy reliable, affordable and sustainable.
To put it in perspective, I’d say a gas-fired power plant, a simple cycle plant with a combustion turbine, is probably in the neighborhood of $2,000 a kilowatt to build. That’s probably the same price as a wind farm, as a rule of thumb. … So you can see where if you’re measuring sheer energy, wind can be competitive on a megawatt-hour basis.
It doesn’t provide the same characteristics that a gas turbine does, and we will need to continue to build new natural gas generation and energy storage to provide the system reliability we need when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Xcel Energy has gotten ahead of these constraints in building natural gas generation by securing 19 combustion turbine slots with Siemens and GE and locking up key engineering, procurement and construction firms to ensure we have the labor we need to build them.
An all of the above energy mix is really required here. We think gas is going to continue to be relevant mostly because of the type of energy demand that we’re seeing. High-capacity needs from data centers and other drivers of energy demand are going to push more gas onto the system. Energy systems are not “one-size-fits-all”. Different geographies lend themselves to different solutions and energy mixes. For example, Xcel Energy operates in some of the sunniest and windiest parts of the country where renewable solutions can and should play a role in the energy transition. We are using our geographic advantage to develop wind and solar generation facilities to help us meet the growing energy demand.
What Else We’re Reading
Scientists tap ‘secret’ fresh water under the ocean, raising hopes for a thirsty world (Associated Press)
Trump’s anti-climate crusade is putting Big Oil in an awkward spot (Wall Street Journal)
California legislature quietly guts an ambitious virtual power plant bill (Canary Media)
The biggest U.S. oil companies are eliminating thousands of jobs (New York Times)
Judge dismisses EPA grant termination lawsuit. The ruling regarding environmental justice block grants could be reflected in similar suits (Politico)
The United Nations pushes countries for new climate targets this month (Reuters)
Connecticut, Rhode Island and energy developer Orsted sue the Trump administration for halting work on New England wind farm (Associated Press)